Polyglot Programming on the Web | Groovy Zone

Polyglot Programming on the Web | Groovy Zone
Whether you like it or not, the web platform has become the dominant client-side technology. This fact is so obvious that even Microsoft and Adobe have abandoned their solutions in favour of the web. And as we’re going to build larger and larger applications in the browser, we need to find ways of doing it in a more productive fashion. I believe languages are a big part of it. And that’s where the Javascript community can learn a little bit from Java.

User Interface Programming in the (Near) Future | Bruce Eckel

User Interface Programming in the (Near) Future

In my article on JavaScript, I observed that we need a new language that generates good and safe JavaScript, so that you no longer have to think about either JavaScript issues or cross-browser problems. Little did I know that the solution(s) had already appeared in the form of JQuery and CoffeeScript.

Google Dart to “ultimately ... replace JavaScript” | 2ality

Google Dart to “ultimately ... replace JavaScript”

The following keynote will be held at the GOTO Aarhus 2011 Conference on Monday, Oct. 10, 2011:

“Dart, a new programming language for structured web programming”

This post explains what Dart is all about and how it relates to JavaScript.

Mobile development with HTML5 | Engine Yard Ruby on Rails Blog

Mobile development with HTML5 | Engine Yard Ruby on Rails Blog

If you read blogs that are even slightly related to tech, you likely hear about HTML5 on a near-weekly basis. Although the new web standard does not do your laundry, it has features that enable the creation of powerful applications—using only HTML, CSS and JavaScript (a Rails back-end can bring additional firepower to the table). This post will go over some key concepts and features of HTML5, setting the stage for more advanced subjects.

Creating Fast Buttons for Mobile Web Applications - Google Mobile Developer Products - Google Code

Creating Fast Buttons for Mobile Web Applications - Google Mobile Developer Products - Google Code

Here at Google, we’re constantly pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in a mobile web application. Technologies like HTML5 allow us to blur the distinction between web apps and native apps on mobile devices. As part of that effort we’ve developed a technique for creating buttons that are far more responsive than plain HTML buttons.

JavaScript is Assembly Language for the Web: Sematic Markup is Dead! Clean vs. Machine-coded HTML - Scott Hanselman

JavaScript is Assembly Language for the Web: Sematic Markup is Dead! Clean vs. Machine-coded HTML - Scott Hanselman

I was talking to Erik Meijer yesterday and he said:

JavaScript is an assembly language. The JavaScript + HTML generate is like a .NET assembly. The browser can execute it, but no human should really care what’s there. - Erik Meijer

JavaScript is Assembly Language for the Web: Part 2 - Madness or just Insanity? - Scott Hanselman

JavaScript is Assembly Language for the Web: Part 2 - Madness or just Insanity? - Scott Hanselman

Some folks think that saying "JavaScript is Assembly Language for the Web" is a totally insane statement. So, I asked a few JavaScript gurus like Brendan Eich (the inventor of JavaScript) and Douglas Crockford (inventor of JSON) and Mike Shaver (Technical VP at Mozilla). Here is our private email thread, with their permission.

Node.js on Windows (or JavaScript for the backend) - Christopher Bennage - Devlicio.us - Just the Tasty Bits

Node.js on Windows (or JavaScript for the backend) - Christopher Bennage - Devlicio.us - Just the Tasty Bits

The simplest answer, albeit a simplistic answer, is that Node (or Node.js) is JavaScript on the server. Actually, it’s a more than just that, but you can read about the more in other places. This is a good enough answer for us n00bs.

Unless you’ve been living in in cave, you might have noticed that JavaScript is all the rage now. It’s the new assembly language of the Web. (It’s even for the enterprise.) With Node, you can now take that webby clienty goodness to your server applications.

‪Google I/O 2011: Learning to Love JavaScript‬‏ - YouTube

‪Google I/O 2011: Learning to Love JavaScript‬‏ - YouTube

JavaScript remains one of the most popular and important programming languages in history. Web Developer and Chrome Engineer Alex Russell exposes the timeless strengths of the JavaScript language and why it is a vital part of the open web platform. Come hear what's next for the JavaScript standard and how to get the most out of the new features coming soon in V8 and Chrome.

JavaScript Redux (and Closures)

JavaScript Redux (and Closures)

It appears we are stuck with JavaScript, at least in the near-to-mid term. Although the language is an abomination, some things are getting better. I discovered a couple of great lectures and a book that might change your perspective (a little) about the language.

In addition, if you still don't understand closures, these lectures might solve that problem for you. In other languages, closures are presented as "it would be nice to have" without terribly compelling use cases. But in JavaScript, closures are essential in order to rescue the language from complete chaos. Closures are much more compelling and easier to understand within the context of JavaScript.

JavaScript: The World's Most Misunderstood Programming Language

JavaScript: The World's Most Misunderstood Programming Language

JavaScript, aka Mocha, aka LiveScript, aka JScript, aka ECMAScript, is one of the world's most popular programming languages. Virtually every personal computer in the world has at least one JavaScript interpreter installed on it and in active use. JavaScript's popularity is due entirely to its role as the scripting language of the WWW.

Despite its popularity, few know that JavaScript is a very nice dynamic object-oriented general-purpose programming language. How can this be a secret? Why is this language so misunderstood?

A Beginner’s Guide To JQuery – Part 1

A Beginner’s Guide To JQuery – Part 1

I don’t know about you, but the real reason I personally got into Javascript was that I wanted to do animations. Animations are cool. Everyone wants to add flashy effects with the least amount of effort and with JQuery (and a number of other Javascript frameworks), it is indeed possible. However, I thought that I wouldn’t be able to learn how to implement animations until a good while later as I assumed that animating DOM elements would require a strong foundation of knowledge on the framework. Well, that wasn’t the case. If you have any experience with programming, be it PHP, C#, Java or any other language, picking up Javascript, and thereafter, JQuery, will not take long at all.

LUG Villafranca Programming Course

LUG Villafranca Programming Course

This document gives a brief outline of the programming course organised together with the Linux User Group of Villafranca, Verona, Italy. The course introduces programming in JavaScript, Ruby, and fundamentals of Ajax over a ten week period. In twenty intensive hours, students are introduced to the tools and methods used in modern programming practices, and the author's twenty years of experience.

This document is being published on the Internet in parallel with the course. Once the course has finished, it will remain as a tutorial for other fledgling programmers.

Getting Started Using HTML5 Boilerplate - Dan Wahlin's WebLog

Getting Started Using HTML5 Boilerplate - Dan Wahlin's WebLog

Whether we like it or not, HTML5 is all the rage now days. With the recent news on “code name” Windows 8’s upcoming support for HTML5 and JavaScript that hype has intensified even more. I’m personally in favor of what HTML5 brings to the table although I do worry about browser compatibility issues that will naturally crop up. Compatibility issues are something that Web developers have been dealing with since the days of Netscape 4 (layers) and IE4 (divs) though so it’s really nothing new; it’s just intensified with all of the new functionality that the various HTML5 specs define. Fortunately, there are several options available that can help reduce cross-browser issues.
Getting started building HTML5 compatible sites can be challenging especially for people who haven’t been involved in Web development projects for awhile. Fortunately, there are a few sites available that greatly simplify the process of getting started building HTML5 websites and offer some excellent “boilerplate” code that can help both new and experienced Web developers. One of the best ones out there is called HTML5 Boilerplate (http://html5boilerplate.com) and others exist such as http://initializr.com (which is based on HTML5 Boilerplate).

The Essentials of Writing High Quality JavaScript | Nettuts+

The Essentials of Writing High Quality JavaScript | Nettuts+

The brilliant Stoyan Stefanov, in promotion of his new book from O’Reilly, “JavaScript Patterns,” was kind enough to contribute an excerpt of the book for our readers, which details the essentials of writing high quality JavaScript, such as avoiding globals, using single var declarations, pre-caching length in loops, following coding conventions, and more.

This excerpt also includes some habits not necessarily related to the code itself, but more about the overall code creation process, including writing API documentation, conducting peer reviews, and running JSLint. These habits and best practices can help you write better, more understandable, and maintainable code—code to be proud of (and be able to figure out) when revisiting it months and years down the road.

Grails + HTML5 = Works « GHads mind

Grails + HTML5 = Works « GHads mind

Today while building a project to test MongoDB integration with Grails, I was curious whether Grails can emit HTML5. So I just tried to apply to great HTML5 Boilerplate (http://html5boilerplate.com/) template and it worked out wonderful. I just changed the default main.gsp, main.css and application.js and added some more files…

HTML5 Boilerplate - A rock-solid default template for HTML5 awesome.

HTML5 Boilerplate - A rock-solid default template for HTML5 awesome.

HTML5 Boilerplate is the professional badass's base HTML/CSS/JS template for a fast, robust and future-proof site.

After more than three years in iterative development, you get the best of the best practices baked in: cross-browser normalization, performance optimizations, even optional features like cross-domain Ajax and Flash. A starter apache .htaccess config file hooks you the eff up with caching rules and preps your site to serve HTML5 video, use @font-face, and get your gzip zipple on.

Boilerplate is not a framework, nor does it prescribe any philosophy of development, it's just got some tricks to get your project off the ground quickly and right-footed.